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Who Has the Best Space Plan: Gingrich, Obama or Romney? [POLL]

Forget about presidential politics for a moment. Forget left and right, Republican and Democrat. Forget the GOP primaries and the same tired old debates that have filled the opinion pages for the last four years.

Instead, to determine the next occupant of the White House, try this question on for size: Would you rather build a moon base or start mining the asteroid belt? Or do you think space exploration should be de-emphasized, and that NASA should be run with the help of the business community?

If you favor the moon base, you're with Republican hopeful Newt Gingrich. The former speaker, a self-confessed space nerd, made that announcement while campaigning Thursday on Florida's space coast. "By the end of my second term," he said, "we will have the first permanent base on the moon, and it will be American."

Former president George W. Bush also directed NASA to aim for a moon base by 2020. (There's a commercial purpose to this; the moon is likely full of helium-3, a potential energy source for the fusion reactors of the future.) That plan was scrapped by President Obama, who favors sending a manned mission to an asteroid instead.

Both Gingrich and Obama want humans on Mars in the 2030s. Obama wants NASA to take the lead on that, while Gingrich favors cutting the space agency's budget by 10% and giving that money to the private sector — in the form of a $10 billion prize for the first organization to land on Mars.

And Romney? Gingrich's rival in the GOP contest has been far less specific about his space plans. But in a recent debate, he suggested his first step would be to have NASA partly funded by commercial interests. "Bring them together, discuss a wide range of options for NASA," Romney said. "Let's have a collaborative effort."

Romney has also said he favors an Apollo-like mission to "excite young people about the potential of space," but hasn't said where that mission should go to.

So whose space policy sounds the smartest? Take our poll below, and sound off in the comments.

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